Permission
by Suz2
Summary: Slash: In the wake of Darien's reunion with his father, 2 characters have an angsty discussion over the nature of the spy biz, its risks, and the price you pay for falling in love... T for mature ideas. Missing tag scene for Father Figure.


Title: Permission

Author/pseudonym: Suz

Fandom: Invisible Man

Pairing: Bobby/Darien

Rating: PG-13 for language and adult concepts.

Status: Complete

Feedback: Of course!

E-mail address for feedback: don't think so

Disclaimers: Don't own 'em, just like to play with their toys.

Notes: attack of rabid wild bunnies late at night….

Summary: A little angsty exchange between two Iman characters with vested interests in Darien.

Warnings: Slight spoiler for FF, bigger ones for the VS3

Invisible Man

Permission

by Suz

"What are your intentions towards Darien?"

"Fuck you. I love him." The stony anger in his voice matches my own.

"You think I hadn't already figured that out?" I ask bitterly. This isn't what I would have chosen for my son.

"No." He hesitates, backpedaling, rethinking the question. "Yeah."

"What do you want from me?" I ask, finally, not sure I even want to know the answer.

The silence is long. And eloquent. And I know what he wants.

Permission.

"Permission," he says softly, the look on his face causing me physical pain.

What the hell do I say? This is my fault, somehow.

Fuck national security. Fuck middleclass expectations. I abandoned my son, and this is the reward for that betrayal.

My son is in love.

With another man.

Who loves _him._

Fuck.

"I _love_ him."

I just stare at him, dark eyes, small build; deceptively small. The love of Darien's life. I'd have to be a moron to miss it. I'd have to be deaf, dumb and blind. And I'd have been vulture bait a long time ago if that was the case. I've never been considered stupid.

Neither of my sons are… were…, either.

"What the _hell_ do you want from me?" I ask quietly.

He just stares back at me, this look in his eyes that makes me nauseous. Light-headed. I know what he wants. He's already said as much. Permission. To woo my son. Who's already so in love with him, I doubt he'll ever get over it. How the hell do I handle something like this? Both Hobbes and I have worked in this business long enough to know that getting emotionally involved with a partner… hell, _any_one, is the fastest way there is to compromise yourself. Compromise the job. Compromise _them_. "You know what you're doing?" I ask rhetorically. He's too much the professional to pretend he doesn't know what I mean.

"You never loved him. At least let me," he answers me finally, every bit as hostile as I feel.

"How am I supposed to stop you?" I demand, angry, feeling the depths of my failures as a husband, a father, as anything that would have made my life about more than death, that would have made this conversation unnecessary.

He glares at me. "You can't," he admits. "But I want to know it's not gonna cause some… kinda _thing_… between the two of you, if I get close to him."

"Some kind of _'thing'_?" I repeat, mockingly. "There IS nothing between us. Not any more. There may never be. You don't have the first clue what sort of choices I've had to make to protect him, do you? Not one. You think I walked away because I didn't love him? I walked away because I _did_." I can't help the bitterness I hear in my own voice. I lost everything that meant anything to me when I walked away from Kate. From my sons. I walked away from the only reason to do the job. I walked away to _protect_ them from the job.

Hobbes just stares at me. "You walked, man. You left him, his brother, their mother… Alone."

"Yes. I did. Because if I'd stayed, they could all have been killed to force me to play by someone else's rules. Hostages to fate. Like he is for you, now. And for me." I just stare at the intense little Special Agent in front of me, wondering if he sees that there's practically no difference between us.

"Whadda you talkin' about, man?" he demands. "You saying walking out on them made them any less vulnerable?" he demands, rage flashing in the dark eyes. "Shit. You gutless jerk," he finishes. "You think we have anything in common? Huh? Well you're wrong, pal. Dead wrong."

I pray I am. And I pray I'm not. "I left him to save his life. Tell me you wouldn't do the same. Tell me that, and I'll know you don't love him enough."

He stares at me, going still, thinking about that. "You left to protect him," he repeats cynically. "Left him and his brother and their mother on their own. Don't kid yourself, pal," he says, the tone scathing. "You left them unprotected. Alone. From what Fawkes said, it wasn't easy for them. You're gonna have to work a whole lot harder at it than this to convince me walking out on your family was in their best interest, buddy. You have _any idea_ what that did to the kid?"

I take a slow breath, knowing this may make or break my communication with this man. My son's champion. His eventual lover. I don't think they've gotten to that point yet, or I doubt Hobbes would be bothering with my opinion. But Hobbes fully expects that development. Wants it. Is praying for it. And my son… I know what love looks like. He feels for Hobbes what I felt for his mother. Passion. Desire. Drive. Desperation.

Love.

Unspoken, unbidden, unanticipated. Unalterable. He's in love. So deep, I doubt he even realizes that Hobbes has become his center. His reason for being. Salvation in one small package. Goddammit. This isn't what I wanted for him. Any more than I wanted a life term in prison for assault. I've done my sons so many injustices… I've failed. Failed in essentially every sense a father… a parent… can. Failed to ensure the liberty and happiness of my offspring. Failed to protect their lives.

My sons.

Kevin.

Dead in his brother's arms. Once again, I wasn't there when they needed me, and it cost me the life of my first born.

Darien.

He is the _only_ thing that remains of me to prove I once passed through this world. The one hope I have left of redeeming myself in the eyes of whatever gods may still be watching over this blighted planet.

And I can't protect him. Not even from himself. I never could.

I stare across the few feet and the vast gulf that separates me from Agent Robert Hobbes, willing him to understand what my choice cost me. And how much greater the cost would have been if I had chosen otherwise. It might have been my whole family who ended up dead, not just my wife. Who died horribly. Knowing that somehow I was to blame.

Katie…

If I give this man what he's asking for, permission to love my son, for whatever good my permission does either of them, they will become each other's hostages to fate.

Who do I think I'm kidding? They already are. I think about that, knowing it's the truth. And also knowing that the two of them ultimately have something I didn't with Darien's mother: trust.

Something I took for granted for too long, and destroyed in the process.

Katie trusted me, at first. It wasn't her fault that changed. Gone once too often, for too long, with no explanation, no contact, I destroyed her faith in me at last. When my control tried to shore up my cover by giving me a petty criminal's record, she found out what I'd supposedly been doing all that time, and threw me out. I talked my way back into her good graces, swearing I'd give it up, knowing she meant the fabricated petty thefts, the low-rent crimes, and knowing _I_ meant something else completely. But by then it was too late. For a lot of things. I remember the night I finally knew I'd never be free of the life. Knew what it might cost me, cost my family, if I didn't walk away while I still could.

I stood there, watching my sons sleep, Darien maybe five, five and a half, Kevin a couple of years older.

Innocence. For me, that word will always be defined by my sleeping sons, trapped in my memory like a bug in amber. A moment frozen outside of time. Fossilized, preserved and cherished. It was maybe the last moment in my life that I knew someone trusted me. Walking away was the hardest thing I'd ever done.

Staying would have been harder.

I left the next morning when my control got an urgent message to me that the associates of one of my 'assignments' were looking for payback. It would only be a matter of time before they tracked me down. Found my Achilles heel. And used my family against me the way I had so often used those of the men I'd killed.

I fix my gaze on Robert Hobbes for a long second, letting those memories wash over me like scalding water, old wounds hurting with fresh vengeance. I lost everything I loved when I left my wife and sons. I lost hope, faith, innocence, trust. To see the contempt in Hobbes' dark eyes seems like a just penance for my many sins. Whatever his life's story, he clearly chose differently than I did. And is doing so again. In asking for my permission, he has accepted risks I was never man enough to face. He is willing to risk his life, and my son's, on the chance that they will find the sort of happiness that eluded me with Kate.

And embracing those risks may just be the thing that will save them both from something I have only lately come to fear more than the danger I once placed my family in. Loneliness…

I nod, once sharply. "Protect him. If you can do it without hurting him the way I did, good. But protect him. Anyway it takes," I say finally, watching the uncertain furrow between the dark brows, the worried squint as he looks up at me, thinking it through.

"It's my _responsibility_ to protect him," he starts, slowly, at last, not sure what it is I'm telling him.

I scowl impatiently. "Is it your job to kill for him? Die for him? Walk away and leave him, if that's what it takes?" I demand.

The furrow smoothes, and the subtle shift of his stance, the tensing of every muscle as he shifts into full defense mode, makes me nod slightly, almost imperceptibly, his body instinctively answering the question even before he opens his mouth. "That's always been the job," he says flatly. "Bobby Hobbes never bails on his partner. Ever. I'm here to do whatever it takes. Why the hell would that change just cuz I… he… we…." He trails off with an almost endearing awkwardness.

There's a certain comfort in knowing that Darien chose his mate more wisely than I did. Unlike Katherine, Robert Hobbes is more than capable of taking care not only himself, but of my son. Katie never knew until it was too late what I'd left her up against. Dangerous men with vendetta in their hearts. But Hobbes… Hobbes knows how to protect Darien from that sort of danger. The queasiness fades with that realization, my internal alarms quieting as resignation sets in.

With the resignation comes self mockery as I am forced to alter a sexual worldview I had thought set in stone. How do I think of my son _now_? As gay? Or simply as someone who fell in love with someone who just happened to be the same gender as himself? For the first time, I am forced to confront the limitations inherent in a label. Especially one I have such contempt for. And yet, I do not hold my son in contempt. Therefore, he cannot be gay. Or if he is, then gayness is not what I thought it was. Something perverted. Twisted. Weak. Something to be condemned, or even acted against.

In a strange sort of way, maybe this is all my fault. Darien acted out his anger and abandonment and ended up in the prisons I'd only occupied on paper. There can be no doubt that his sexuality was challenged in that environment. God only knew what he was subjected to, my slender, almost pretty son. So much like his mother, a pacifist by nature, reluctant to cause harm to another, and therefore an easy target for the sort of brutality that has become legend in prisons.

Why I should be shocked or surprised that he did what he needed to to survive escapes me. And perhaps that is the realization that makes me look at Hobbes again, not as an Agent, not as an ex-marine, but as a man who has done what he must to survive. And somehow found a bond with Darien that might defy rational heterosexual convention, but that allows each of them the comfort and protection of a partner who will do anything to protect the other. Even without sex entering into things, they are that for each other. Partners in every sense of the word. To deny them the physical element of that bond suddenly seems petty, vindictive.

For all his flaws, perhaps because of them, Darien is my son. But his happiness has never been within my ability to control, until now. Until this moment.

The weight of Agent Hobbes' dark stare is almost more than I can bear; impatience, anger, the stubborn refusal to take 'no' for an answer pulsing off him as he waits for me to give him what he's asked for. I stare over his head at the dusty earth and the rows of orange trees that my mother has called her world for the whole of my life, ignoring his restless anger as I take in the scent of the soil, the heat of the sun, the energy of growing things. Life.

Would I condemn my son to loneliness in addition to all the other indignities and challenges he's been burdened with already? When the solution stands in front of me like an immovable object? I can't quite suppress the smile that comes with that thought, as the inevitable comparison of Darien's personality to the proverbial irresistible force flickers through my head. Both of them headstrong: stubborn, willful Darien, and equally stubborn, dogged, persistent Hobbes. I would never have expected two such disparate personalities to have meshed with the intensity I've witnessed between them.

I love Darien, even if the only way I could express it was to abandon him when he was far too young to understand the reasons. And I stare into the eyes of a man who has the strength to do what I couldn't: stay and protect my son.

"The truth is, Agent Hobbes, you don't need my permission," I respond at last, the faint smile not fading.

He shifts impatiently. "You're right. I don't. But Darien might." His bold gaze is a confrontation, the recognition of an alpha male by another alpha male, challenge implicit in the tension in his smaller body. Darien gets his height from me, all six feet three inches of it. I'd be surprised if Hobbes stood much more than five-six. But the sheer kinetic energy in the man more than makes up for any lack of stature. The truth is, I wouldn't willingly take him on in a bare knuckles fight. I nod slightly.

'Then he's got it," I say at last, and watch the hostility evaporate out of the shorter man before me like rain off a summer sidewalk.

"Who's got what?" comes Darien's query from behind me. It is a testimony to the power of Hobbes' presence that I didn't notice my son's arrival.

"Heya, partner," Hobbes greets him over my shoulder. I catch the softness in the Agent's expression as I turn away from him to face my son.

"Not important," I answer Darien. "Your partner wanted to express some… concerns, that's all," I assure him.

Darien frowns slightly, looking from one to the other of us, squinting a bit in the dappled sunlight that falls over his face, emphasizing the wild unruliness of his hair and the dark coffee brown of his mother's eyes. I see him glance at Hobbes, looking to take his cue from his… partner…, and he relaxes slightly as he looks back at me briefly. "Bobby, Alex sent me to find you. She wants to know -" he starts, only to be interrupted by a good-natured snort from Hobbes.

"I'll just bet she does," he snarks, making Darien grin slightly.

"Hey, don't shoot the messenger," my son shrugs, the punk in him requiring some manner of flippant answer.

"Nah, gotta save all my ammo for the bitch who sent the message," Hobbes grins back and steps past me, smacking Darien playfully on the arm as he passes, making his way across the yard towards my mother's ramshackle house without a backwards glance.

Darien watches him go, shoving his hands into his pockets, before ducking his head slightly to peer at me with eyes gone suddenly soulful. "So," he says, shuffling slightly, scuffing the toe of a boot in the dust. "What do you think?" he asks, nudging a shoulder at the retreating back of his partner.

"I think… I think he's an excellent partner. An honorable man. I think he'll do his best to make sure you're safe," I answer neutrally, watching him glance back towards Hobbes, as the shorter man disappears into my mother's house.

Darien sighs, and shuffles his feet again before glancing back at me. "So," he repeats, all his attention focused on me now.

"So," I repeat.

"What happens now?" he asks. "To you, I mean?" he clarifies.

"I crawl back under the same rock I came out from under, I guess," I shrug, turning and heading down one of the rows of the orange grove, my son tagging along like a dog, clearly with something on his mind.

He thinks about that, or thinks about something, anyway, because it takes a minute or two before he answers. "You think, maybe, we could, you know, talk? Before you disappear again?"

I glance back at him, smiling at the hint of a whine in his voice. He still hasn't grown out of that particular five-year-old's habit. "What do you want to talk about?" I ask, knowing the likely answer, and he sighs, choosing where to begin. And there, under the afternoon sun in an orange grove older than either of us, I finally meet the man my son has become.

-Miles Vorkosigan, a literary creation who lives his life the way I do, once told his father; "It's easier to ask for forgiveness than to get permission…" Well, that's pretty much my life's motto, I guess. And so I asked. For forgiveness, for disappointing a father I'd assumed didn't care. A father I don't know. Who maybe doesn't know me. Forgiveness for all the mistakes I've made in my life. And the one, best, truest choice I've made; loving Bobby Hobbes. - _Darien Fawkes_

_Finis_


End file.
